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Amar Katharani

Poker In India

Poker for me is one of the best card game one can play and has picked up alot in India in the last 2 years as more and more people have started playing the game and trying to understand and learn in.

People who are new to poker or hence the mind frame of people in india is such that anything to do with cards is just gambling and nothin else. But when it comes to poker u require alot of knowledge and understanding of the game besides luck. Luck is always a factor in anything in life, you need luck in any thing you do. For example in cricket sachin tendulakar is the greatest player one has seen but that dsnt mean he has never got out on a duck sometimes he too runs out of luck….a cricketer may hit a ball for a six and get out on a exactly similar ball the next time its all on how u play and that moment.

The same thing comes in poker its not always that you require a great starting hand to win a pot, as i have lost most of the times with Pocket AA and KK all because i played them badly or the opponet outplayed me or i ran out of luck.

In india when it comes to poker all what i have seen and noticed it that people play poker almost very similar to gambling which sometimes gives or makes them money but over a long period such players will loose more than what they make. Even the riases at regular house games in India r just way too much, for example a good raise is 3x or 4x so in a 100-200 game 800 should be a good enough raise for people to fold crap starting hands but what happens is that raise is considered too low and hence invites a multiway pot inviting 6-7 callers in a table of 9. People in India tend to fall in love with their starting hand which is again not a great thing in poker e.g i know many ppl who plays hands like 9Q, 48, 8 10, on any kind of raises, which again as i had mentioned earlier becomes more of a gamble rather than poker. What they need to understand is that avoid gambling and taking risks of seeing a flop with high raises often. I understand if a person is card dead for a while and hence takes a few risks sometimes, but one should avoid such gameplay in order to sometimes get into hands one cant get out of and therefore loose big money.

Indian players also need to understand the difference between Cash Games and Tournemant. They dont understand that both cash and tourneys require different game play. Tourneys require alot of Patience, luck, and smart gameplay by which i mean it requires a person to have a mixture of all three of the eliments in order to do well in tourneys.

Poker is somethin you can learn in 5 minutes but takes a lifetime to master. Every hand one plays there is somethin new you learn and guess we will still be learing till our last hand is dealt. Its not about how well you Hold’em but its to have the knowledge, courage and balls to know when to Fold’em.